do you clean your truck prior to working on it?

Damn wish I had a wash bay. I barley get to wash my truck during the winter months. It's either always raining, or like 30 degrees

 

Get ya some rain slickers and crawl your ass under the truck with a pressure washer or really good hose nozzle, prepared to be dirty. Oh goggles too. Been there done that.

 

diesel powered hot water pressure washer in our wash bay. works mint. Thats one plus of working at a car dealership lol

 

I like working in a clean setup
I always spend the extra few minutes cleaning before I work on my cars

 

You could just run a sprinkler under your truck for about 30 minutes. Won’t be spotless but would surely help.

 

what kind of wash bay?
Like a floor wash bay with a drain grate at the bottom,
or a wash bay with a car lift that lets you lift the vehicle up in the air and spray at it from underneath?

I wish I could figure out how to properly use chemicals and tools to help with the cleaning, preferably quickly and not taking all day
because water alone probably will only do so much

I failed badly at trying to clean/detail my engine bay last time, by spraying degreaser and pressure washing. I bought some brushes thinking I could agitate/kick up the dirt to make it free and then rinse it off,
except like literally 5 seconds after spraying the degreaser, it already dried up. And brushing dry dirt doesn't really do anything to it.
The engine bay wasn't hot or anything either; truck was cold from sitting.

It looks quick and easy in YouTube videos but it didn't go that way in real life.
I imagine it's the same way from underneath.


Best bet DIY I'm thinking is to buy some RhinoRamps to drive up on in a DIY wash bay and get underneath with a pressure washer; maybe even with goggles and some sort of water proof clothing, to spray it.

 

Its really nothing special what I do. I just sweep up my surrounding area and I wipe down any accumulated grime on my engine on a regular basis.

 

5 mins of mudding= 5 years of mud falling in your face an eyes when working on it LOL

 

I haven’t been mudding in a while becasue the last time I went out I had to recover two wranglers. (Pulled both them out first try, silly Jeep owners LOL) anyways I got so much mud caked in every crevice and hole that the only way I could get the undercarriage clean was to do basically what you said. I threw on a complete water suit with goggles and nose cover and crawled underneath with the pressure washer and pet it rain mud on me. Still took half a day to get it all.

 

I would go with a floor jack that can go as high as 21 inches to prevent needing wooden block for additional height. The one you posted is nice weight wise but lacks in lift height. I would never recommend leaving cake on mud for long, especially on known rust prone frames of Tacomas.

 

Oh yeah I forgot to mention part of the reason why I can clean up faster is because the dirt and grime buildup is easier to clean up from crawling around the mall lol